Good news. Healthy mums mean healthy kids.

Not exactly rocket science but the key findings, reported here in the Daily Telegraph, are:

For each hour mum increases her physical activity, their child’s play time increases by 16 minutes a day.

But if mum adds an hour of screen time, their child’s sedentary viewing expands by eight minutes, the study found.

..Mum’s screen time was “the only factor significantly associated with their child’s screen time”.

So now we have no excuse for not getting out for that walk!

When I had to do a lot of physiotherapy after a second painful knee operation last year, I learned that, despite being busy like all working mums, it actually was possible to find time for exercise. I had additional motivation because I was facing a permanent limp unless I actually did my thirty minutes every single day, but it was a great lesson to learn.

I’ve slipped back a bit since then but I found new ways of exercising I hadn’t considered before. The best one was to do lunges and push ups on playground equipment. You need to manage it so you can see enough to race over and stop your kids from waving that stick around or jumping off something and breaking a leg, and it feels a little silly at first, but it does actually allow you to do two things at the same time. I also try and catch up with friends for a walk and coffee at the end, rather than just a coffee, or to meet with children at the beach or playground with a ball so I can get a little incidental exercise. Chasing a three year old on soft sand gets your heart rate up!

Does this study make sense to you? Do you have time to exercise, and do you think it influences your children?